The Ghosts of Babylon
by Ford.Ye.Fiji
Summary: A strange supernatural (not the TV show!) twist to the decommissioning of Babylon 5. For all those who cried at that episode. Disclaimer: I do not own Babylon 5, it belongs to the great maker JMS.


**A/N: I don't know where this came from. Half of it was me wanting to write a B5 fic and the other was the fact that they blew Babylon 5 up and the fact that it really bothered me because now... Doctor Who has made me see machines as sentient... Anyway, warnings: mentions of teen pregnancy and abortion (only mildly) and, Disclaimer: I don't own Babylon 5, ah- Babylon 5 my good and dear friend.**

 _This is is the story of the last of the Babylon stations, the story began late in 2256 when the beacon of hope for a new future of peace was finished with construction. It failed in the year 2260 but in the process it became the hope for victory and, in this area, it succeeded. Now 25 years after its beginning in 2256... The year is 2281, the name of the place is Babylon 5._

A sound echoed across the halls of the gloomy station. A light flickered with a buzz and the little girl continued to run down the empty halls. The girl was crying and then she ran straight into a wall of black fabric.

A deep old voice chuckled. "Oh, dear. Are you alright?"

The girl shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands nervously.

"Are you lost? You do know that they're going to decommission this place... Blow it up, right? I don't think it's exactly the safest place to be lost."

The girl looked up into the strange man's eyes.

"Momma told me not to talk to strangers." She said quietly.

"Your Momma is very wise person." The girl grinned meekly. "Yeah, she is."

"Now, we'll find her and go..."

The girl began crying again. "No, no, no! No! I don't want to go!"

The man rubbed his white and gray beard thoughtfully. "Now, come on... Surely you don't want to stay? No one will be here and..." The man hesitated and then added, "It is going to be blown up."

The girl wailed again. "B- but I don't want it to be blowed up! I like this place! It's my home!"

The man blinked. "But no one is living on Babylon 5..."

"We are!" The girl hiccuped loudly and it echoed across the walls like a drum. The man picked the girl up and rubbed her back comfortingly.

"Where was the last time you say your Momma?" The girl pointed in the direction she had been heading, toward the Zocalo.

The girl noticed the deep green gem on his robes and she tapped it with her nail. It hit it with a sharp click and the girl said, "Your jewel is pretty mister."

The man grinned, "Why don't you tell me your name?"

"Alisha, mister."

"Well, Alisha, where do you live? She does not appear to be in the Zocalo." Alisha sighed and counted on her fingers before nodding and saying, "Brown 4."

The man nodded and Alisha examined the jewel closely before saying, "Mister, what's your name?"

The man's mouth quirked up into a thin line as if in memory, "You can call me Captain."

"That's a funny name!"

"Oh, I've got lots of names. I just happen to like that one the most."

"Captain isn't a name. It's a title. Momma says her name is Alisa Beldon and Momma is her title."

"I suppose that's true."

"So what's your name?"

"John Sheridan."

"That's a nice name. You know, you have the same name of that man in that war."

The man winced, internally thinking of the Earth-Minbari war and dreading the fact that she might call him Starkiller at any moment.

"The one who married the pretty lady and killed the spider things. I liked him, he seems nice. Now, you can't be him, he's old but he isn't as old as you are! He doesn't have wrinkles or a beard."

The man chuckled.

Alisha looked up and there was the docking bay entrance. "No! I don't want to go! No!" The girl tried to claw her way out of the man's grip.

"Whoa! Alisha! Calm down!" The girl stopped fighting and began sobbing into the man's shirt.

Captain Sheridan rubbed her back as the two last security guards came up. "Are their any other life forms on the station?" He asked quietly.

"No sir. Everyone is accounted for and there are no other life forms." The guard (name tag, James) looked curiously at the girl and the second one (a portly woman, Luna) scanned the girl quickly and then she looked up in alarm.

"Sir, Mr. President! She doesn't register as a life form!"

"Alisha?"

The girl peered up at him with a tear-streaked face. "Yes, Mister Captain?"

"How long ago did you see your Momma?"

"She left me Mister Captain, she left me. She left with the pretty bald lady."

Sheridan shook his head and then asked one of the guards, "Can you give us a moment?"

"But, sir, the station is going to be decommissioned!"

"Just tell them to wait, a- a complication has arisen." The guards sighed and nodded and made their way back to the shuttle port.

Sheridan set the girl on the ground and Alisha grabbed his hand nervously as the Captain addressed Babcom.

"Access Files, Alisa Beldon."

"Files available."

"Who is Alisa Beldon?"

"Alisa Beldon was born in 2244, she lived in Down Below when she was fourteen in 2258. The resident commercial telepath Talia Winters found her stealing after Alisa had a mind burst in the Zocalo. Alisa Beldon left for Minbar a few days later."

Sheridan looked at the small girl holding his hand uneasily. "Your mother was fourteen?"

"Yes. But she didn't want me, she killed me. Why didn't she want me Mister Captain?"

The Captain's eyes were growing wider and rounder as the girl continued to talk.

"She met a man and she payed him to kill me, why?"

"Y- you're dead."

"Yes, we're all dead. I told you, we live here. And I don't want to go. I don't want to get blow up."

"Where are the others?"

"This way, come see."

The girl led the Captain down the hallway and they disappeared in the gloom and dark corridors of the station.

"See, Mister Captain?"

A huge crowd of people shimmering a little bit passed by each other. Narns in security uniforms (the attack on Babylon 5 by earth force), security guards, hundreds of aliens, and lots of the residence of down below. There was a man by a table dressed in rags shifting cups around, saying, "Around and around she goes, where she is nobody knows." Then a man came up to the Captain and smiled.

The man wore ranger garb and he had shoulder-length brown hair and beard. "Captain Sheridan! How nice to see you again. Give Susan my best regards and do make sure she doesn't keep my body too long. She really should move on."

Marcus saw Alisha. "Alisha we have been looking all over for you! Your grandfather is very worried."

"Bye Mister Captain!" Alisha waved and they disappeared in the crowd.

Sheridan gaped and made his way back to the guards. He winced and he could feel the edges of his vision growing dark.

 _"At the end return to the beginning."_

When the guards found him, Captain John Sheridan was propped up against the wall, dead.

Babcom bleeped. "One knew message." The guards exchanged glances before nodding. "Except."

Sheridan appeared on screen and he was looking pained. "Don't destroy the station. Make them understand, you can't destroy the- the station..."

"End of message."

The guards gaped in disbelief and they turned to look at the body of Sheridan. There was no body. He was gone.

 _Babylon 5 was never destroyed. They left it in orbit of Epsilon 3. Susan Ivanova took her last journey to the Babylon station after her retirement from Entil'Zha. She had a stroke and died on the station._

 _Michael Garibaldi and Doctor Franklin lived out the last year of their lives on Babylon 5 and their bodies were taken back to Mars for burial. No one knew that they had left their souls behind._

 _Of course, a hundred years later, the orbit was gone and the space station would become space junk that would drift forever. The Minbari used advanced ships and took hold of the massive five miles long station and they carried it to a safe place._

 _Delenn of Mir traveled to the station and died on it. Her body was never found. Some of the religious Minbari that traveled to see the relic would say that they could hear ghosts laughing and dancing._

 _A million years since the beginning of Babylon 5, it was still there in place holding the ghosts of all who had lived, and loved, and died in its time. The souls of the dead keeping it there._

 _One could even say Babylon 5 itself had become a ghost. It would shimmer in the light and pop into existence at strange places. It became a legend and if you were lucky you could find it out there among the stars._


End file.
